


Twenty-Four

by TheSleepingKnight



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Fic Trade, Gen, Horror, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27327988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSleepingKnight/pseuds/TheSleepingKnight
Summary: Welcome, says the sign above the diner.Everyone keeps leaving, says the readerboard.
Kudos: 24





	Twenty-Four

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarcoFro5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcoFro5/gifts).



Here is a true thing: everyone inside the diner is dead.

Here is another true thing: the milkshakes are delicious.

Let’s back up a bit.

* * *

Jacob takes a sip of the milkshake, letting the liquid roll over his tongue, white and red mixing brilliantly in a collage of colored flavor. It tastes like… _America._ Almost. Far be it for him to critique near-perfection, but there’s something missing from the red and white. It needs something blue. Something old, something new, something… _you._

He scoops up his milkshake and makes shaky strides across the dirty floor of the diner, his feet crunching and sloshing alike, the aftermath of the party. He briskly arrives at the table with the police officer who is still laughing with all of his friends at the screaming tv, leaking colors and burbling static laden updates. _**CIVIL DANGER ALERT**_ , it chirps, churning out noise like a drunken man at a wedding, like an air raid siren. Bursting through their subconscious like bombs, falling on London Town.

“Hey, hey!” One of them chuckles as he approaches, still drinking his american-flavored milkshake. “Listen to this one.”

_**EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM,**_ the box sputters out, red oozing from the speakers even as the men in white go to mop it up. _**DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. STAY INDOORS.**_

The policemen burst into peals of laughter, like hyenas cackling as they tear each other apart, flesh flying and bone splitting. Jacob can’t help but laugh as well, even if he feels it stirring around inside as he does.

“May I, officer?” He asks, and the man politely bares his neck. Jacob drags his knife across it, and blue spills from the fountain, perfectly sinking into the red and white. He takes a new sip, and _aaaaahhh,_ that’s the stuff. There’s what it was missing. Now he’s got the full experience of it all, skyscrapers dragging their pointed tips against his tongue, valleys rushing through his taste buds, cities pouring themselves down his throat. The officer gurgles and slams his head onto the table, blue overriding the white, flooding onto the floor and his friends have yet to stop laughing. It reaches Jacob’s ankles as he goes back to the counter. By the time he’s downed half of his shake, it’s up to his knees.

He toasts god and sinks.

_**METEOROLOGICAL EFFECT IN PLACE,**_ the tv shouts one last time, pouring it’s innards out. _**DO NOT LOOK OUTSIDE.**_

Shall we rewind?

* * *

_“Ring-a-around the rosie!”_

The feet thump against the tile, hard, a war drum signalling the marching of the troops. Sneakers and boots and heels and sandals thump and slap and squeak and click, chaotic rhythms. Life, motion and _e_ motion, expressing itself.

“ _A pocket full of posies!”_

It was the children who fell first, frail little hearts beating too hard for their chests. They fell out of the dance, limbs shaking, dropping to the floor to rest. Of course, the adults continued on, boots and heels and sandals stomping and crushing and breaking, the drumbeats gaining a wet texture.

_”Ashes! Ashes!”_

The next who fell were the elders of the group; even the energizing pulse of the dance could not sustain them long. They laid down to rest, bones brittle and muscles worn. They barely even cried when the heels and the boots crushed and cracked and snapped. Why, by the time only the best among them remained, you might even think the skulls were smiling.

_“We all fall down.”_

The dance is over, and the mothers pick up what remains of their children, the sons gather up what remains of their parents, and they take them back to their booths. Doesn’t a drink sound nice?

Ah. Let’s go further.

* * *

“Mama? When do we get to go home?”

“Be patient, dear.”

“You said that the last tim—”

“I _know._ Please, Jessie, go play with the others.”

“Can I please—”

“ _No,_ Jesse.”

Jesse pouts and walks over to the other children, despondent as a child always is upon hearing the words _no._ No is a curse, No is the enemy of fun. Jesse, you see, doesn’t know the other kids in the diner, she doesn’t _like_ them. There’s only five of them, and two are in that weird period where you’re not a kid but the adults still see you as one so they’re off hanging by themselves, and one’s a bit older then her but he’s a _boy,_ and ergo stupid and not fun. (And picking his nose where he thinks no one can see. His name is Dylan, but no one will ask.) The only other girl around her age is so shy she might as well not exist, clinging to her father’s jeans.

So Jesse is on her own. Like normal.

She just wants to go _home._ But something’s weird with the moon, and it’s not safe. Even though that’s silly. The moon isn’t dangerous. Everyone _else_ is. She learned that a long time ago. The old man who lives down on the street is dangerous and she shouldn’t let him offer to drive her to school. The woman who has the next door over is dangerous and Jesse isn’t to talk to her because she has all of those flags and that means she doesn’t _like_ people like Jesse. And momma is dangerous, sometimes. When she opens the fridge too much and has too much of that weird water. Maybe everyone’s had too much of the weird water. Maybe that’s why all of the adults keep yelling at each other, getting quiet, and yelling again.

Maybe it’s all of this and maybe it’s just the simple, inexorable and irresistible tug of a child’s curiosity that has her walking over to the blinds, ignoring the warbling tv’s warnings and yanking on the thin cord.

Light floods the diner. Jesse sees him. He smiles. She smiles back.

Everyone changes.

* * *

A little more, perhaps.

It’s not a particularly large crowd in the diner that evening. An assortment of families and people on the road. After all, you don’t really go _to_ the diner on the edge of town, hanging onto the highway onramp like a spider web hanging onto lamplight. You just _wind up_ there. One of the many tub drains of the world, alongside Seven-Elevens and other such liminal spaces. Families, on the move. Children, begging for food and desperate parents locating the first restaurant they can afford. Drifters in their own right, never quite settling anywhere, drawn to a building with a shared transient nature.

It’s what dooms them all.

There’s a man on the tv. Something is happening in the midwest. A tinker is out of control, and the PRT is coming down like the hammer of god, delivering justice.

_“Ladies and gentlemen, I am being told that while the criminal parahuman known as String Theory is being taken into custody, her latest work was on a timer that our own Tinkers are working right this minute to shut down. I will not misinform the American people.”_

Only half of the diner is even paying attention. The minutiae of their lives are infinitely more upsetting than such a distant story. The children have their eyes locked onto the screen, the adults glance and listen but no more than that.

“ _Ladies and—”_

A flash of light, in the distance. A beam of pure power, a lighting bolt in reverse, surging from the ground to scorch the heavens.

“ _L-Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been informed that the Protectorate heroes were unable to disable String Theory’s device, and it has penetrated the moon. Video footage shows that it— it’s drilled a hole into the core…”_

A few more eyes. Now that it’s impacted their little world, they care. They pay attention.

_“The damage to our celestial sister is catastrophic— fortunately, it seems as if the blast did not create too much debris, saving us from meteor showers— wait. I’m getting told that the cameras are seeing something. America, something is— oh **god** , somet **hing** is comi **ng ou** t fr **om** **the moon**. **It’s— it’s beauuuuTIFUL!”**_ His voice changes in real time, face going marvelously flat and then almost luminescent with rapture. The man laughs, joyously and then he begins clawing at his face, smashing it into his desk. Crimson erupts from the skin, rivulets of blood. Screams are heard from behind the camera, and he leaps out from his desk.

The broadcast, of course, ends.

The tv displays nothing but static for a few moments.

Everyone is paying attention now.

_**EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM**_.

_**DO NOT LOOK OUTSIDE.** _

**_STAY INDOORS._ **

**_METEOROLOGICAL EFFECT IN PLACE._ **

* * *

Here is a true thing: McNally’s Diner is always open for business, twenty-four seven.

Here is another true thing: No one has ever seen McNally.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, Cauldron.


End file.
